User blog:Merricksdad/Preventative Measures
Preventative Measures Over the next month or so, I will be taking preventative measures to ensure this wiki, the WM host script, and its related sidekicks do not actually infringe upon Facebook.com or its trademarks. What's Going On I have not received any notice or anything from facebook. As stated above, its just a preventative measure. If this script family is to grow, and then be spotted on facebook's dev team radar, I'd like it to not register negatively. While facebook has generally not been malicious in their attempts to protect their brand and trademarks, I'd like to avoid any legal issues and just simply not step on their toes while I am working. After taking a day to read up on a lot of history regarding facebook trademark security initiatives, I have found a lot of script authors have been nicely asked to drop all facebook trademarks, copyrighted images, or even change names entirely. I will be pretending that facebook HAS issued me a legal notice to do the same and working as if I needed to. What I Should Be Doing Here is a general rundown of what others have had to do to stay on FB's good side: *Stop using the words: Facebook, Face, FB, Poke, or Wall in the product name *Stop using their logo in any form *Stop displaying FB interface images *Don't show Zuckerberg's images in examples To comply with this imaginary legal notice, below is a list of things I will have do do: *Rename the script as to not have either FB or Wall in the title *Move the launch page on facebook.com to a location that fits with the new title *Build a new icon *Rewrite some minor code in every script including N-th party sidekicks. *Redraw some of the images on this wiki so that they do not blatantly show FB interface graphics How Can You Help? This is really not a huge deal, and like I said, its not like I HAVE to do this in any timely manner. But I want to, both for prevention of legal issues, and so that you users can keep using this script without monkies on your back. What I need from you: *Understanding: in that the script will be moving, renaming, and working from somewhere else than it is right now. Script names will change and so installation names will also change. This means that your options will NOT carry over, and that you may experience duplicate scripts in your GM script manager. *Patience: in that it may take a full 30 days to complete the shift, in which time there may be trouble for the end user that I do not foresee. After all I have not yet honed my psychic powers. *Caffeine: as I am short on time and caffeine causes the relative time between point A and point B to seem longer or more useful. Send me caffeine by pitching in a dollar via paypal. Donate via PayPal. A single dollar from 1000 persons worldwide is still 1000 dollars. I know you wont all donate, but if only 1% of you do, thats still 10 bucks. Thats 3 drinks "out" or a lot of black joe in the brewer at home. Thanks ahead of time. *Conform: If you are a sidekick developer, please work with me by being open to changing some of your script's code. This will include a change to the userscripts header as well as some other MINOR code changes surrounding the facebook brand. I will be posting all needed changes on the Sidekick Dev Forum and even contacting some of you directly with some code snippets. While You Wait... Since this changeover will take about 30 days to complete, and I really intend to use the entire 30 days so I can get it right on the first try, you may find that activity on this wiki, including responses from me to you about script issues, is greatly lacking. If at all possible, users with better levels of scripting skills, or knowledge on the topic, should really try to help other users with issues. I also enabled live chat on the wiki over a month ago, and I am fairly sure nobody has used it yet. Give it a try. I am sure it sucks compared to other chat programs, but it can't be that bad. If you are a script developer, feel free to use the current tutorials and all other resources to make sidekicks for WM 2. We can always bring your script up to standard later. Help Rename FBWM Category:Blog posts, Category:Polls